


Passive Aggressive

by glitterburn (orphan_account)



Category: Dong Bang Shin Ki
Genre: Community: kink_bingo, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-07-13
Updated: 2012-07-13
Packaged: 2017-11-09 21:18:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,361
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/458550
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/glitterburn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Changmin just keeps on pushing.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Passive Aggressive

Changmin shoves Yunho, puts more force into it than necessary. The choreography calls for it, but there are ways to fake the strength of the push, ways that Changmin ignores. He slams the flat of his hand hard against Yunho’s chest and forces him to give ground. 

Sometimes he can make Yunho stumble, and he knows it’s real and not faked for the performance. Those are the times Changmin feels most alive, when he hits Yunho right over the breastbone and feels heat and the slick of sweat, feels Yunho fall back. 

Changmin always keeps his gaze lowered when he lashes out. He doesn’t want Yunho to see how much he enjoys shoving him away. He doesn’t want Yunho to know that he’s doing this as provocation. And, if he’s honest with himself, he doesn’t want Yunho to see the anticipation in his eyes, the hope that one day he’ll push too hard and Yunho will retaliate.

*

Yunho is stronger than him. More muscle mass, and a knowledge of martial arts that’s stayed with him despite his claims that he only learned when he was in school. Some skills are never lost, but others require practice. Retaining the knowledge of how to ride a bike is not the same as retaining the knowledge of how to kill someone with your bare hands.

Maybe he’s exaggerating the killing part, but Changmin is aware that Yunho knows how to defend himself. Yunho knows all the blocks and locks and feints and how to throw a guy over his shoulder and onto the ground without breaking the guy’s spine. And that is simply not something you do just on muscle memory, especially when your name is Jung Yunho and your normal higher-functioning memory has all the retention capacity of a sieve.

Changmin knows that Yunho still fights. He denies it these days, but Changmin knows he’s lying.

In the past, whenever Yunho got a head of temper on, he’d go down to the Super Junior dorms and match himself against Siwon, who has always had more cause than anyone else in that group to be spoiling for a fight.

Sometimes Sungmin offered himself as sparring partner instead. The physical differences of that contest always added a certain piquant interest. Sungmin is small, beautiful; from a distance he looks breakable, but there is nothing soft or fragile about him.

Donghae actually ran a book on it the first time Yunho went up against Sungmin. That was when it was all five of them in the group, and Changmin had gone against the others and backed Sungmin. Jaejoong had looked really offended, as if Changmin had done something treasonous. Junsu had laughed through his nose, and Yoochun just shook his head and said, “Your money, Minnie.”

He’d done it not because he didn’t think Yunho would win, but because almost everyone else, including the majority of Super Junior, had put their money on Yunho. Changmin bet on Sungmin because he knew what it was like to be overlooked and underestimated. Hyukjae and Ryeowook bet on Sungmin because they thought he’d kick Yunho’s ass. Turned out all three of them were right. Sungmin wiped the floor with him.

Junsu, Yoochun, and Jaejoong ragged Yunho about his failure. Yunho shrugged it off, but took Changmin aside one day and asked, “How did you know I’d lose?”

Changmin had looked away, uncomfortable. “Because sometimes you have to. You can’t win all the time.”

Yunho had stared at him, then nodded. Smiled. “Oh, Changminnie,” he’d said, and hugged him, swift and fierce.

A rematch was held ten days later. Yunho decimated Sungmin.

*

In the days when there were five of them, occasionally, just sometimes, Yunho lost control when he fought. It excited Changmin then and it excites him now. He wants Yunho to lose control with him. He wants their pathetic choreographed pushing and shoving to become something more. He wants them to fight for real, and he wants their struggles to turn into hard, rough fucking, because then maybe Yunho will realise what’s in front of him.

Changmin hates it that Yunho won’t trust him with this. He’s not the baby of the group any more. They’ve grown up together, been through so much together, and yet still Yunho seems to think that Changmin needs to be protected. Even though it’s just the two of them now. Even though the managers and stylists and company execs listen to both of them. It’s unfair and it’s ridiculous, and then Yunho says in an interview that Changmin is like his wife, and Changmin wonders if that’s it—if Yunho truly thinks of him as some kind of untouchable delicate flower that needs to be looked after.

The next time they rehearse the song, Changmin punches him. Yunho looks startled and hurt. Changmin is glad. He’s not the weak link. He’s never been the weak link. Now he just needs to make Yunho acknowledge it.

*

When they shoot the cover and booklet art for _Keep Your Head Down_ , they’re told that the concept is martial and aggressive. They stand around in suits and have talc emptied all over them and they wrestle for the cameras, bump and clash and hold on to one another.

Changmin fixes his gaze on the neck of Yunho’s t-shirt, or on a streak of talc daubed through his hair, or his ear, or the scar on his cheek. He looks anywhere but Yunho’s eyes, and is aware throughout the shoot of the way Yunho is staring at him. The challenge is an act, only there for the cameras. It’s what lies behind it that makes Changmin’s stomach flip. The curiosity, the gentle quizzical expression that asks _Changminnie, what is it? What do you want?_

“Stupid concept,” Changmin says during a break.

“It’s manly,” Yunho responds, fiddling with the seal on a bottle of water.

“The song is supposed to be about overcoming a break-up.” Changmin rolls his eyes at the predictability of it all. “I fail to see how punching each other in the gut is a suitable illustration of this fact. Shouldn’t we be showing manly solidarity instead?”

Yunho goes still; looks blank. “Real men don’t hug other men when they get dumped. They don’t go looking for comfort, they... They do something else.”

“They beat up their friends.” Changmin flicks a glance at him. “Do you really find that comforting?”

“You’re taking this too literally.” Yunho abandons the water without opening the cap. He won’t meet Changmin’s gaze. “You know it’s not about that. It’s about male pride, and that’s always aggressive.”

“Yes,” Changmin says. “United we stand and divided we fall. Pride was what got us here, wasn’t it?”

Yunho looks up then, and there’s such sadness in his eyes. It’s gone a moment later, and he laughs, all smiles again as usual. “Maybe I’m misreading it, too. Maybe they chose this concept because everyone knows we fight like cat and dog.”

“Yeah.” Changmin decides to let it go. “Maybe.”

*

Changmin keeps on pushing Yunho. On stage, he shoves so hard he leaves bruises. It’s not necessary for them to be so rough with one another, not during a live performance and certainly not during a rehearsal, and yet Yunho keeps getting in Changmin’s face, and Changmin can’t help his instinctive response. He grips and thumps, claws his hand against Yunho’s chest. He wishes he was brave enough to leave scratches, but bruises are just as good. 

He likes it when the stylists put Yunho in a jacket with no shirt, or in a waistcoat with no shirt, or anything in fact that involves a deep cut of bare flesh. That’s his canvas, and he pushes and shoves and something inside him tells him to stop, but he can’t. Not even when brutal red marks flower all over Yunho’s skin, not even when news sites publish photographs and write articles about it. The stylists remark upon it, too, as do their friends within the company, but it doesn’t matter. Yunho doesn’t say anything, and until he does, Changmin isn’t going to stop.

One of them will break first. It’s not going to be him.


End file.
